You may want to use them. I do no such thing. Look out at the Whole World, eck ol' pal. The Whole Freakin' Thing. Then You Tell Me which leader of a country possessing any power to influence world events (including Soft Power) has the highest standing (in terms of the values that the "free world" supposedly cherishes). C'mon, buddy. Ahm-a waitin'. And remember, ecky: we're talkin' relatives, not absolutes. In the meantime, take a valium. It'll do wonders for your disposition.
My dark horse is Iran. In the long term I feel like Iran won't sit in its present state. One option is it collapses in on itself entirely. The other is that it is integrated with the outside world and suddenly all the education tied up in it breaks free. Never going to be a world leader, but in 50 years I would place even odds on Iran being a hellscape or progressive cool place, with few options between.
Iran is in an interesting place. The elder end of the population remembers the good times under the Shah, before the Revolution, and I'm sure time has dimmed the bad parts. They remember the relative freedom, the openness, the connected-ness to the developed world. The youngsters are present on social media and access world media (openly or covertly) and are dissatisfied with the mullahs to one degree or another because they see what the western liberal democracies have goin' on and they want that too. I think eventually Iran will pull more and more toward liberalization, tho it's likely going to be a bumpy road.
It would have been nice if Obama would have done something to help them in 09 when it looked like something was about to go down.
Yes, Iran might have a lot going for it once they get rid of the mullahs and, equally important, once oil ceases to be coveted by every giant on the planet. Persia had a great empire and Iran has been part of the British/American empire. And lots of shit between. So they've been around the block. From what I hear, the countryside remains pretty conservative (a bit like Turkey). So if all we pay attention to is what happens in Tehran and Istanbul, we can easily draw the wrong conclusions. So, as you say, a bumpy road, and no doubt a long one.
Pretty much the same way as nearly everything touched by the policy hand of Obama = mishandled even worse than his previous incompetent handling of affairs.
Putin tried that then when his puppet lost he tried to assassinate the head of state in Montenegro just like he did in Ukraine a few years back. That is what Putin has been doing, attempting to assassinate European heads of state he dislikes. Holy shit, that is dangerous stuff which starts wars. Anyone remember how WW1 started?
Trying to 'help' moderates in Iran or interfere in what's going would be an awful mistake. We can't force a place to become democratic, the people have to want it and fight for it. Interfering in their government is how we got into this whole mess with them in the first place. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état Remember we helped overthrow their democratically elected leader. The Shah was liberal and friendly to our interests, but he was also seen as a puppet and the people became resentful. The best thing we can do for them now is to keep exposing them to Western culture, freedom, media, and products. Oh and a blanket ban on anyone coming from Iran will seriously hurt the progressives over there. Most of the Iranians who come here are scientists, doctors, and other professionals who are probably the most liberal Muslim folks you will ever meet. Banning people like that is incredibly short sighted.
I agree with Zor Prime's entire post, especially the bit about they have to want it and fight for it themselves. The best way to help them is to make damn sure you don't play into the mullahs' hands, which boneheads like Donald and Boy George always do. While obviously not in favour of a blanket ban, I'd like to say something about this. A genuine refugee should be admitted as a matter of course. But allowing non-refugee doctors and whatnot to immigrate (a feature of US and Canadian immigration policy, among others no doubt) amounts to a brain-drain on countries that actually need those people at home. And if they're liberal-minded, maybe they should stay at home and help with the struggle. I definitely think accepting them as immigrants is wrong, though there are far more egregious cases than Iran for this sort of thing. Also, being a scientist or whatever is not in the slightest incompatible with being a murderous wackjob. I believe I'm right in saying that eight of the 911 hijackers were freaking engineers. And Ayman al-Zawahiri -- head of al-Qaeda -- is an ophthalmologist. (Just like Bashar al-Assad come to hink of it ...)
Agreed, more often than not, in hindsight, the US would've been vastly better off if he basically sat on his hands instead of the course of action he took re international affairs.
No hit, no cigar. Just a wee grain of truth magnified about 10,000 times to the exclusion of all the other grains lying around. If getting hit by a minuscule grain is a "palpable hit", then one is living with the sorriest of munchkins.
That, and Iran has a historical liberal democratic tradition. It's really only the last few decades which have been a complete 180, in terms of fundamentalism taking over politics. It's a really great example of a "there but for the grace of God goes" the US situation.
Well .... it had a constitutional monarchy well over a century ago. But since then there have been a number of coups and shahs and whatnot. It isn't as if everything were rock-solid till the Brits and Americans stepped in and overthrew Mossadegh. It was, as Bailey would say, a damned rocky road. Again, like Turkey, Westernization was imposed from above. Hey, I might do that too, reasoning that otherwise it isn't going to happen. But --- like the backlash we've seen in recent years in Turkey --- the last shah got one hell of a backlash. And look who was swept into power by the masses when the shah fell. It wasn't exactly Bernie Sanders.
